Thursday, 21 September 2006

If a line is drawn running through Albania, Macedonia and Thrace on to Constantinople, the structure of the indigenous Balkan population splits as follows: south of this line there are mainly Greeks, while north of it one finds the Illyrians, Thracians and Dacians. Traditionally scholars have seen the Dacians as the ancestors of the modern Romanians and Vlachs and the Illyrians as the proto-Albanians (some linguists, however, have brought serious arguments supporting a Dacian-Moesian origin of the Albanians). As an result of numerous invasions (the most significant one being that of the Slavs) many of these indigeneous were killed, others fled to walled cities, to the islands, or withdrew to the mountains or other remote places, reappearing later as Vlachs or Albanians who begin to turn up in written sources in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The relation between Vlachs and Slavs exposes a kind of law of history: conquerors occupy easily exploitable resources, rebels withdraw to to seemingly less hospitable lands where they can still preserve their freedom. These roles were played by the romanized Dacians (plainsmen) and the un-romanized Carps (mountaineers), while after the Slavic invasions, the Romanized plainsmen were forced into the mountains and the Slavs occupied the plains. Centuries after, following the Ottoman conquest, many Slav peasants abandoned the plains to join the Vlach folk of the mountains, and the plains came into the possession of the Turks.

Evidence on the Latin-speakers North of the Danube is provided by the anonymous chancellor of King Bela, to the effect that the Hungarian settlers on the plains of the Tisza and Danube rivers (by the end of the 9-th century) found there "Slavi, Bulgarii, et Blachi ac pastores Romanorum " .

Archaeologial research on cemeteries of early medieval rural settlements in Transylvania (the best known example is that of Bratei, near Medias) points to the development of a new people, Latinic, but with customs and traditions inherited in equal measure from the Dacians and the Romans.

The Eastern Romance continued to evolve until, at the Slavic Invasion (about 600 AD) the Daco-Roman dialect began to separate from the three dialects spoken south of the Danube, Macedo-Romanian, Istro-Romanian and Megleno-Romanian. It is believed that the four dialects became fully distinct during the 9-th and 10-th centuries.

One of Greece's first and best prime ministers was John Kolettis, a Vlach who dressed like a Turk and had been court physician to Ali Pasha.

In 1797, the first primer of Vlach was published, in Greek characters, by Constantin Oukontas, a priest originating from Moschopolis. In 1813, M.J. Bojadischi published a Vlach grammar, 22 years before the first Bulgarian grammar. The book contains dialogues taking place between a visiting Pole and a Viennese Vlach - as if Vlach had become a Central European lingua franca ... Actually, the beginning of the nineteenth century witnessed a significant emergence of the Vlach consciousness: it was mostly related to Moschopolis , a city which hosted many rich Vlach merchants, very likely to be educated men.

An significant moment is related to the activity of Apostol Margarit, a Vlach teacher who tried to teach his pupils in their own language. In 1864 the first Romanian school started near Monastir. Margarit set up schools in Avdhella (1867) and Grevena (1869).

Today, the 'official' Greek (nationalist) position on the Aromanian minority is that the Vlachs are generally Greeks who happen to speak a Latin dialect. There is not enough evidence favoring this claim. For more details on Aromanians and their historians one may see the book of Tom Winnifrith , "The Vlachs: The History of a Balkan People" (New York, St.Martin's Press, 1987).

MOSCHOPOLIS:

Moscopole

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Voskopojë, Voskopoja; Aromanian: Moscopole, Moscopolea; Greek: Μοσχόπολις, Moscopolis or Moschopolis; Macedonian: Moskopole; Serbian: Moskopolje) is a small village in southeastern Albania. In the 18th century, it was a major Balkan city and cultural and commercial center of the Aromanians (Vlachs), having notably the first printing press in the Balkans, but it was razed in 1788 by Ali Pasha.

Contents

History

Although located in rather inhospitable place in the mountains between Greece and Albania, the city rose to became the most important center of the Aromanians. In its glory days (1760s) it is said that it had a population surpassing 60,000 and was the second city of the Balkans as population and prosperity, surpassed only by Istanbul; but this is questioned by Peyfuss.

The city is said to have been inhabited almost exclusively by Vlachs/Aromanians. An 1935 analysis of the family names shows that the majority of the population were indeed Vlachs. There were also Greek merchants, although according to the German historian Johann Thunmann who visited Moscopole and wrote a history of the Aromanians in 1774, everyone in the city spoke Aromanian; many also spoke Greek (the language of the church), which was used for writing contracts.

Toward the end of the 18th century it flourished due to commerce with Germany, Venice and Constantinople and it had various manufacturing plants, around 70 churches, banks, a printing press (the only other press of Ottoman Europe was in Istanbul) and even a university (The New Academy, or Hellênikon Frôntistêrion, founded in 1744). A cultural effervescence arose in Moscopole, and many authors published their works in both Greek language (which was the language of culture of the Balkans at the time) and Aromanian written in the Greek alphabet. In 1770, the first dictionary of four modern Balkan languages (Greek, Albanian, Vlach/Aromanian and Bulgarian) was published here. (Peyfuss)

The 1769 sacking and pillaging of the Ottomans was just the first one from a series of attacks, which culminated with the razing of 1788 by the Albanian troops of Ali Pasha. The survivors were thus forced to flee, most of them emigrating to Greece (where they returned to their ancestral occupation of animal husbandry), Serbia, Romania and Bulgaria. Some of the commercial elite moved to Austria-Hungary, especially to the two capitals Vienna and Budapest, but also in Transylvania, where they had an important role in the early National awakening of Romania.